We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Google's new chatbot, Bard.
Hard Numbers: Meet Bard, grim new climate report, Colombia’s Toro ban, Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ law, IMF approves Sri Lankan relief
1.5: A new UN report says the world has less than a decade to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target). Industrialized countries must halve greenhouse gasses by 2030 and halt carbon dioxide emissions by the 2050s to avoid cataclysmic flooding, droughts, heat waves, and species extinction.
8: Bullfighting remains legal in eight countries worldwide, but that may soon change. The majority of Colombians want to end the practice, which has been a tradition since colonial times. Colombia’s Senate recently voted to ban bullfighting, but the legislation now faces a tough challenge in the lower house, where an earlier proposed ban was shot down last year.
10: Uganda’s parliament passed a harsh new anti-LGBTQ bill on Tuesday that could lead to 10-year prison sentences for those who engage in “same-sex activity” or identify as LGBTQ. If President Yoweri Museveni signs the bill – he has suggested he supports it – Uganda will become the first African nation to criminalize simply identifying as LGBTQ.
2.9 billion: Sri Lanka has secured a $2.9 billion rescue package from the IMF to aid in its economic recovery. After defaulting on its sovereign debt last year, the island nation faced its worst economic disaster since independence. The package will likely boost international investment, but strict austerity measures will hurt Sri Lankan households already struggling with sky-high inflation.
Supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko gather during a protest to support its leader, Ousmane Sonko in Dakar, Senegal March 14, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Senegalese protests, Wifi in the Amazon, Sri Lankan strikes, Ukraine’s day in court
5,000: About 5,000 supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko are protesting against the government of two-term President Macky Sall, who they say is cracking down on civil society and targeting Sonko with cooked-up lawsuits. Sonko, who aims to run for president in 2024, is facing trials for libel and rape.
7: To be an illegal miner deep in the Amazon, you need diggers, guns, gumption, and evidently … good wifi. Amid a broader crackdown on these lawless wildcatters, Brazilian feds have seized 7 of Elon Musk’s Starlink portable internet terminals, which were set up at covert mining sites. The swoop comes as Amazon deforestation reached a new monthly high in February.
40: More than 40 Sri Lankan unions are striking to protest the country’s all-but-signed IMF loan deal, crippling the country’s ports, rail stations, airports, and schools. While the government sees the bailout as an essential lifeline to end the country's worst-ever economic crisis, the unions are furious about the tax-hikes that are part of the package.
3bn: Ukraine and Russia are going to court! In 2013, just before protests toppled the Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Kyiv got a $3 billion loan from Moscow. The Kremlin did it to keep Ukraine from slipping further into Europe’s orbit, but the subsequent pro-Western Ukrainian government saw it as a Russian financial albatross imposed under duress and refused to pay it back. Russia sued, and a UK court on Wednesday ruled that Ukraine has a case – so now it will go to trial.An FBI photograph of documents and classified cover sheets recovered from former US Pesident Donald Trump's Florida estate.
What We're Watching: Trump obstruction evidence, IAEA team in Zaporizhzhia, IMF-Sri Lanka bailout deal
Did Trump conceal top-secret documents?
Donald Trump repeatedly blocked US law enforcement from accessing highly-classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence (and lied about how many files remained there), according to a scathing new document released Tuesday by the Department of Justice. The filing came in response to a recent request by the former president that the documents — seized from his Florida estate by the FBI on Aug. 8 — be reviewed by a third-party arbiter to decide if any are covered by executive privilege. (The DOJ opposes this on the legal grounds that the records don’t belong to Trump.) It’s the most detailed account to date of the months-long attempt by the National Archives – an independent agency that stores and preserves government records – to obtain classified files Trump took from the White House after the 2020 election. The filing includes a photograph of documents labeled “Top Secret” and claims that some material was so sensitive that some FBI and DOJ personnel required additional security clearances to review them. Crucially, it also states that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation” after Trump’s legal team ignored in the spring a grand jury subpoena seeking all classified documents. A federal court decides Thursday whether the arbiter can be brought in.
Nuclear inspectors in Zaporizhzhia
A team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors finally arrived Wednesday in Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. Despite heavy fighting in the area, they plan to visit the city’s contested nuclear power plant on Thursday. The group — which excludes US and UK members, as demanded by Moscow — will assess the damage from shelling and power outages that last Friday briefly disconnected the facility from Ukraine’s power grid, raising fears of another Chernobyl at Europe's largest nuclear plant. The IAEA had been asking for access to the site since March, when Russian forces took over the facility. Indeed, the task will be anything but easy: the inspectors want to interview Ukrainian workers and establish a permanent monitoring mission at the site. The Kremlin reluctantly agreed to the latter, but won't withdraw to create a demilitarized zone around the perimeter. Kyiv, for its part, is worried that Moscow will threaten workers not to speak out against the Russian presence there, giving a false impression to the international inspectors that everything is under control. Meanwhile, southern Finland reported Wednesday small amounts of radioactive isotopes, which could indicate a leak from the Ukrainian plant. Although the source is unknown, in 1986 the first hint that something had gone horribly wrong in Chernobyl was unusually high levels of radiation detected at a nuclear plant in southern Sweden. Just in case, Ukraine is doling out iodine pills to people living near Zaporizhzhia.
Down-and-out Sri Lanka close to IMF deal
Mired in its worst economic crisis ever, Sri Lanka has reportedly reached a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund. Good news for the government in Colombo, which in May became South Asia’s first to default on its foreign debt in over two decades. Years of economic mismanagement and graft under the former Rajapaksa dynasty pummeled Sri Lanka’s economy. More recently, big tax cuts in 2019 decapitated the country’s main source of revenue, while COVID decimated its tourism industry and slashed remittances. As its foreign currency reserves dried up, Colombo resorted to printing more money, pushing inflation to a whopping 70% in July. Scarce food and fuel in recent months caused mass social dislocation, prompting a run on the presidential palace and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. News of the IMF deal came one day after new President Ranil Wickremesinghe released his first budget, which includes some tax hikes that will be painful to the struggling poor and middle class. What’s more, Sri Lanka still needs to restructure around $30 billion of debt owed to foreign creditors — including China. That might be challenging, considering that Sri Lanka is often cited as a case study in the perils of China’s debt trap diplomacy.